Jonathan Edwards's Philosophy of Nature: The Re-enchantment of the World in the Age of Scientific Reasoning

Description

Jonathan Edwards's Philosophy of Nature: The Re-Enchantment of the World in the Age of Scientific Reasoning analyses the works of Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) on natural philosophy in a series of contexts within which they may best be explored and understood. Its aim is to place Edwards's writings on natural philosophy in the broad historical, theological and scientific context of a wide variety of religious responses to the rise of modern science in the early modern period - John Donne's reaction to the new astronomical philosophy of Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo, as well as to Francis Bacon's new natural philosophy; Blaise Pascal's response to Descartes' mechanical philosophy; the reactions to Newtonian science and finally Jonathan Edwards's response to the scientific culture and imagination of his time.

Avihu Zakai is Professor of early modern history and early American history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His fields of interest are Protestant religious history in both Europe and America in the early modern period, from the Protestant Reformation to the Great Awakening in America. In the past he published several books with, among others, Cambridge University Press and Princeton University Press.

An accessible overview of religious responses to the emergent natural philosophy. * British Society for Literature and Science * [This book] does two valuable services. First, it places Edwards on a scholarly map which joins English and American theatres of philosophy. And secondly, it celebrates a discourse which criticized the new mechanistic philosophies, a discourse which needs to be digested before being injected into modern debates over nature and transcendent meaning, as some readers of Edwards are wont to do. * Reviews in Religion & Theology * "It is compelling and profound...It will pay dividends to the reader who wants to struggle with the relationship between the material reality of the world as presented by modern science and the spiritual realities of a God-driven world as implied in the gospel.' * Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology * This is an informative volume that situates Edwards in a broad context of early modern religious response to the Enlightenment mechanical philosophy; which divorced nature from spirit. Comparing the American philosopher-theologian Edwards to the likes of Donne, Pascal and Leibniz, Zakai shows that rather than simply reasserting religious claims, Edwards articulated a singularly sophisticated response to the New Science - appropriating what he could while also reconceiving a religious view of the cosmos. -- Gerald R. McDermott 'A stunning achievement, this sustained analysis delineates Edwards's response to early modern science. It positions Edwards with others (like Donne and Pascal) who thought its presuppositions and procedures radically challenged Trinitarian Christianity. While relentlessly criticizing heresies (like Arianism, Socinianism and Deism), Edwards labored to re-invigorate study of the "book of nature" -- through typological exegesis of scripture not mathematical analysis. Philosophically rejecting Newtonian science, Edwards advanced his theology of divine self-disclosure: God creates, sustains, directs and redeems nature and history alike.' - John F. Wilson, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA. -- John F. Wilson Reviewed by Don Schweitzer, St. Andrew's College, Saskatoon, Canada to appear in the Toronto Journal of Theology (Canada) 'Zakai's study of Edwards in relation to the secularizing trends of early Western modernity offers an insightful and exemplary history of ideas in the early modern period that will be a 'must read' for all Edwards scholars.' -- Don Schweitzer